ASSISTED MIGRATION OF PLANTS SYMPOSIUM - CHICAGO BOTANIC GARDEN

Become enlightened about assisted migration and its role in fighting plant
extinction in this year's Janet Meakin Poor Research Symposium.

When fragmentation limits migration potential of plants or when natural
migration and adaptation rates are outstripped by the pace of climate
change, some conservation biologists propose purposeful, human-mediated
migration, known as "assisted migration" or "managed relocation," as a way
to prevent extinction. In this symposium, we examine this controversial
topic from both sides of the issue and suggest ways that the benefits of
assisted migration can be maximized while minimizing the costs and risks.
Details will be posted as they are confirmed.

BERTRAND RUSSELL ON GOVERNMENT

I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that
can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give me an
adequate army, with power to provide it with more pay and better food than
falls to the lot of the average man, and I will undertake, within thirty
years, to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are
three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils when it gets cold, or
any other nonsense that might seem to serve the interest of the State. Of
course, even when these beliefs had been generated, people would not put the
kettle in the ice-box when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water
boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed
tones, but not to be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that
any verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and
obstinate heretics would be "frozen" at the stake. No person who did not
enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed to teach or
to have any position of power. Only the very highest officials, in their
cups, would whisper to each other what rubbish it all is; then they would
laugh and drink again. This is hardly a caricature of what happens under
some modern governments.

The discovery that man can be scientifically manipulated, and that
governments can turn large masses this way or that as they choose, is one of
the causes of our misfortunes. There is as much difference between a
collection of mentally free citizens and a community molded by modern
methods of propaganda as there is between a heap of raw materials and a
battleship. Education, which was at first made universal in order that all
might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite
other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates
collective enthusiasm. If all governments taught the same nonsense, the harm
would not be so great. Unfortunately each has its own brand, and the
diversity serves to produce hostility between the devotees of different
creeds. If there is ever to be peace in the world, governments will have to
agree either to inculcate no dogmas, or all to inculcate the same. The
former, I fear, is a Utopian ideal, but perhaps they could agree to teach
collectively that all public men, everywhere, are completely virtuous and
perfectly wise. Perhaps, when the war is over, the surviving politicians may
find it prudent to combine on some such programme.

Bertrand Russell: "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"

MY HOROSCOPE FOR TODAY

You cannot force people to change their beliefs. The more you try, the more
they will cling to them. But why would you want to change them? The world is
actually a better place for its myriad of opinions.